New "Obsession"

Like I really need a new obsession.... :o)  I just discovered Collage Obsession, where folks show their collages each week.  This week's theme is mermaids.  Above is an art quilt I made several years ago.  The mermaid fabrics, hair, and beads were all added to the background. 

I've been wanting to get into digital collage.  While my mermaid is neither new, nor digital, I decided to use it as my motivation to join Collage Obsession.

Looking at these details makes me think I should get back into fiber art and/or bead work again.  Here's a link to my website, Uncommon Cloth, if you want to view my fiber art.  I made art quilts for 12 years, but, other than some small ones for the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative, I haven't made any quilts since 2007. 

AAQI Update

The Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative holds a quilt auction from the 1st to the 10th of each month.  This month two of my art quilts are in the auction.  Red Sky At Night is a larger quilt, 20"x27" - most of the quilts are a maximum of 9"x12".  My other quilt in the auction is Wild Daisies.  A third quilt of mine, Lorn Lake, is in the AAQI's "Quilts for Sale" section and is listed for $75.  Back to the auction - there are only a couple days left!  As of this morning, Red Sky At Night was at $210 and Wild Daisies at $55.  And I have three more mini-quilts ready to go in the mail tomorrow.

Oh No!!

Check out this book - not only is it about Zentangles, but they're playing with fabric.  I have fabric....  I made art quilts for over 10 years, and even though I've greatly reduced my fabric stash, there's still several drawers of the stuff in my studio.  I am NOT going to buy this book.  I am NOT going to buy this book.   (Okay, it's on my amazon wish list, but that doesn't mean I'm going to actually buy it.)  The author, Suzanne McNeill, has a great blog about zentangles and some beautiful examples done in color.

Three Silly Purchases

I was back at the thrift shop, Second Blessings, where I had found, and rescued, Big Louie. This time I bought a necktie for him. It's a Carlo Palazzi, 100% silk, and hand made in Italy. ($2) Big Louie is quite fond of the necktie - he never had one before. He's modeling it here, but plans to save it for Sundays and special occasions.

My second silly purchase was a computer for Flossie. Her old computer had been broken for a while and she hadn't been able to write or post on Flossie's Frog Blog. She'd been complaining a bit about that.... This computer was on a shelf of odds and ends, way in the back of the thrift shop. It cost $5, and Flossie and I are both very pleased with it!

The third item, a four-foot wooden ladder, was purchased at the pet store. The idea was to provide a means for Casey Cockatiel to get back up from the floor to his cage on the card table. The silly part is that we ever believed Casey would use the ladder.

We let Casey hang out on the top of his cage, and every once in a while he decides to attempt an escape. Despite the fact that his wings were trimmed when I bought him about ten days ago, Casey manages to cover quite a bit of territory. Yesterday, in two "hops," he made it through this large room, out the door, and halfway across the living room before I caught up with him.

Here's a shot of Casey, on top of his cage, obviously doing some plotting. (Behind him on the wall is one of my art quilts, Marty Macaw.)

I thought I had the escape problem solved. Big Louie lives in this room, too. I tried to get Casey Cockatiel to pose for a picture with Big Louie, but Casey was scared of him and flew away, squawking, the couple times I tried. So I enlisted Big Louie's assistance in keeping Casey in this room. I stationed Big Louie on the floor, blocking the doorway. Last night, Casey didn't even want to be on the floor when Big Louie was sitting across the room.

So this morning, as I was preparing to write this blog, and expound on my cleverness, Casey took off from the top of his cage, sailed across the room, and made a beautiful landing on Big Louie's head.
Well, so much for being intimidated.... Casey may think he rules the roost, but I haven't given up yet.

Etsy Treasury

One of my ACEO prints, called "Fireworks," made from one of my art quilts, is in a 4th of July treasury on Etsy today. It's in the lower right-hand corner. Clicking on the image will enlarge it. Here's the link to the Etsy site.

Flying High

I've mentioned that I don't have much success taking pictures of gulls in flight. While this bird was flying around, I was snapping pictures like crazy with my digital camera, without even knowing if the bird was in the viewfinder. When I got home and put all my new photos into Photoshop, I was more that pleased to see that not only had I captured the gull, but that the moon was in the same picture. I cropped the above photo - there was LOTS of extra sky in the original picture. The images below are the results of my efforts in Photoshop. You can click on the pictures to see enlarged versions.

When I save a new image as a .jpeg, I try to add all the filter information in my image title. Some of the titles get pretty long! This image was mostly "texture/grain" and "stylize/diffuse."

The main filter for this image was "artistic/fresco." Wouldn't this picture make a cool art quilt?

For this picture, I started by adjusting "auto levels" and then played with Image-Adjust-Curves. I've only found out about Curves recently. You put your mouse on a line in a graph and drag it around while you watch really cool things, in terms of color and light/darkness, happen to your image.

For this last image, I used Image/Adjust/Equalize; then Image/Adjust/Posterize (set at 8); than Image/Adjust/Hue-Saturation (I set Hue to -160, Saturation to +20, and Lightness to -30.) And, yes, code for all that information is in the title of the .jpeg!

Playing with Pattern

Here's a picture that I took on one of my walks on the golf course.
In Photoshop, I made three duplicates of the photograph, changed their orientation, and put them together in a new image. (I described doing this with tree fungus in my last post.) Here's what the new image looked like, before and after I merged the four parts together.
My next step was to make three copies of this picture, and put them together in a new image. I then changed the color to make it look more brown than gray.
I next selected the "Palette Knife" filter in Photoshop, and got what I felt was a more painterly-looking image.
My last step was to again make three copies and put them together in a new image. This one looks an awful lot like a quilt pattern to me! It's fun to take a bit of landscape and come out with a complicated, colorful pattern like this one.

Fabulous Fungus

Guess I'm into tree stumps these days.... On one of my walks, I came upon a stump that had marvelous tree fungus. (Click on any image to see an enlargement.)

I took lots of pictures and then played with them in Photoshop.



Changed some colors...


It got to be really interesting when I started duplicating some of the shots and making new images with them. I took this last image and duplicated it till I had a total of four images. I flipped some of them so that the same part of the image was located in each corner of my new design.When I merged the four parts together, this is what I got:

I couldn't believe how beautiful they came out. I made about 10-11 of them altogether. When I was showing them to a friend, she starting seeing aliens, turtles, monkeys, and other strange creatures. Here are some detail shots that show what we saw.

Since I sell notecards in my Etsy Paper Press shop, including notecard sets that contain five different designs, I picked my five favorites out of the images I had generated. These five are listed as individual cards, named after fruit. (Okay, sometimes it's hard to come up with names....) These cards are also part of a notecard set that I named "In the Abstract." Here's a picture of the insert that goes in with the set.

To say I had fun with this project is an understatement! Here's a link to the notecard set. The individual cards are Banana, Boysenberry, Grape, Kiwi, and Plum. Makes me hungry, just thinking about it....

A Walk in the Park

We live near a golf course where I enjoy going for walks. I go early morning or late evening when the golfers aren't on the course. I have a new digital camera that fits in my pocket, and I've been taking it with me on my walks. I LOVE this camera! It's a Canon PowerShot digital camera. It seems to take good pictures - regardless of what I'm doing with it. I also have a serious Photoshop addiction and enjoy working with my photos in that software.

Here are some of the images from my last two walks.

One of the water traps, with willow tree:

A pine tree:

A small stream:

This is the pampas grass that's growing in the back of the last picture:

And this is a wooden bridge that crosses a small stream. Part of a sand trap is visible in the background:

I've made notecards from two of these images and posted them in my Etsy shop, Paper Press, in the "New Notecard" section. One is Wooden Bridge and the other is Pampas Grass.

More photos to follow!

Frog Blog #5

Bad Boy Buddy

Introducing Buddy, a new character in the Frog Blogs.

(To see previous Frog Blogs, please use the search box on my blog and use "frog blog" for your keywords.)

(Click on article to enlarge.)

This wasn't good news for Buddy! After reading the newspaper article, he decided that it was time for him to head for parts unknown. He hopped into his classy new BMW and was on his way.

To be continued....

Julia Cairns

Julia Cairns is one of my favorite artists. Here's a link to Julia's website. Julia Cairns is a watercolor artist who specializes in paintings with African imagery. In 2004 I saw a calendar of her paintings and fell in love with her work. I contacted her and received permission to use her designs in my art quilts.
That year I made an art quilt that I called "Bequia," from the February 2004 calendar illustration. Three different fabrics from old thrift shop clothing were used for the background of the art quilt. For the dress, I folded the skirt fabric into pleats, which enabled me to run a border along the bottom of the dress. The rooster was great fun to make! I do enjoy naming things. My "island girl" is Anya and the rooster is named Red.

Another one of my art quilts was inspired by a painting by Julia called "Waiting for the Bus." During a recent visit to Julia's website, I discovered a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle of this painting. My husband and I lived on a sailboat for many years, and during our time in the Caribbean, I often stood on corners with the island women, waiting for the bus.... The painting certainly brought back a lot of memories!
For this art quilt, I painted the background foliage using Fabric Brush Markers. The flowers in the upper left corner were from the "dress fabric" worn by the woman on the right. They each have an earring, and the middle figure has a beaded necklace. From left to right, I've named them Dora, Evangeline (with her son Evan) and Frances.










I felt that Julia had been very generous in giving me permission to use her images. I made a small art quilt from her painting "Butterfly Boy" and sent it to her as a thank-you gift.

Julia Cairns images are also used on fabric from Cranston. I had been walking past the fabric section in Wal Mart one day when Julia's images, which are so unique, caught my eye. I bought some of the fabric and used some small figures and a dog in my art quilt called Parrot Bay.









"Waiting for the Bus" and "Bequia" now hang in one corner of my studio.